#bite wounds

@papara-week day 5: Vulnerability

Asriel, you failed beeing a protetcive brother!

Warnings: Vampire whumpee, whumper turned whumpee, werewolf caretaker, blood bag caretaker, family death mention, rotting wounds, mentions of captivity, mentions of female character being held prisoner (No whump), blood drinking, brief non-sexual nudity, abuse, illness, delirium.

Taglist: @purple-heart-x

NOTE: The female character was only kept to be trained as a guard dog, because she is a werewolf, not for torture or anything sexual

2/2 wondering what it would look like? MC being male, well-trained and reasonably healthy(it’s end of winter, so slight malnutrition probably). Could infection be treated effectively(herbal medicine is confusing) or is medical options purely symptomatic(cooling of fevers, draining the wound, etc.)? I’m not intending to kill the character, though I’d like a reasonable recovery period post-healing(MC being a warrior, I assume stretching of scar-tissue/PT will happen) Thanks for being epic!

Hey there! Thanks for your question! 

So you bundled a lot of questions in, and that means I kind of need to give you the short version of each of these questions. Keep in mind that the mindset of people in medieval / fantasy worlds may not match the modern understanding of medicine; things like germ theory aren’t really A Thing, everything is filthy, everything is treated by bleeding, etc. etc. 

Will they stitch the wound? If they’re a 21st century doc, no, we’ve learned that bite wounds do better without formal closure than with; same with “gouging” type injuries. I don’t know the mindset of the time, but suturing a wound like this is a good way to trap bacteria. 

Can a local infection become sepsis? Yes. This is realistic. Go with my blessing. *anoints your story in blood* This comes with fever as part of the package. Hallucinations are possible and may be tactile (touch), scent, auditory, or visual. They can be quite vivid. 

Also, one thing. In the worst of it, have the character pee very little, and have that pee be dark and very smelly. It will gladden the blackened stone my doctors keep insisting is a “heart.” 

(Side Note: My favorite high, by the way, is actually a rockin’ fever; unlike many, I enjoy them. But then, I don’t do The Drugz, so maybe it’s as close as I get to an altered state?) 

What will scarring look like? First, we’re talking about an uneven and irregular wound, and it will take time to heal. It will scab first, then knit, then scar; the scar could be what I call “textural” (not discolored, not raised, but evident), hypertrophic (red and raised), or keloid (thick, raised, rubbery). 

Can infection be treated effectively with herbs? 

Dammit, Jim, I’m a critical care medic, not an herbalist! 

Seriously though, there are a lot of herbs and materials that have antibacterial properties; silver is one (silver nitrate cream is a very common cream in wound care in the modern day, and oil of thyme, basil, and some other plants are used as preservatives). A great many peoples have come up with herbal antiseptics; I just don’t know enough about them to recommend any. 

James Duke, PhD with crazy medical botany creds, doesn’t cover bacterial infection in The Green Pharmacy, but in the section on fungal infections he mentions licorice*, teatree oil*, garlic*, black walnut, chamomile, henna, lemongrass, or turmeric, all as having antifungal properties (and thus may play a role in local healing herbs). Look up herbal remedies of the day in the part of the world you’re emulating. 

As for treatments for fever, Duke mentions willow (from which aspirin is derived)*, meadowsweet, elder, ginger, peppermint, and red pepper. 

Asterisked* items are reported to be more effective. I’m not qualified to talk about how salves or ointments might be prepared, but I know willow bark tea is a known fever reducer.  

I hope this helped!! 

xoxo, Aunt Scripty

[disclaimer] 

[Maim Your Character: How Injuries Work in Fiction is out on Mondaaaaay!!!] 

Hey there nonny! 

She can recover on her own even if she becomes septic. You can get her pretty sick with this one! 

Her survival will depend more on good wound care (cleaning, clean bandages) and making sure she at least drinks broth. But you can have the wound get infected, get hot, weep pus, cause a fever, stink, etc. She could even be delirious for a couple days but pull through. 

All of that is realistic, and it’s still survivable. She’ll need someone to take care of her and her recovery from sepsis this bad could take two weeks or so, but you as a writer get to play with fevers, fever dreams, questions about what is real, and so much more!

Best of luck with your story. 

xoxo, Aunt Scripty

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Welcome back, @vorpalgirl! 

Honestly, the best thing is going to be a bandage and some splints and a ride to the hospital. You didn’t specify extreme bleeding, so a tourniquet isn’t going to be likely or necessary. Your character could just get by with some splints -- hopefully padded -- and calling it a day :) 

Thanks for popping in! 

xoxo, Aunt Scripty

I realized my previous ask may not have been clear (darn character limits!) the person doing the biting thinks they're a zombie, but is a human (albeit one that has been gnawing on rats and bunnyrabbits for a while). Thank you again for being so awesome!

Hey there! You’re pretty awesome too!!

So the first thing is that this character won’t be getting stitches right away. Bite wounds are usually left open so that the bacteria in the wound have somewhere to drain. There’ll be dressings but the wound will be left open for the first 72 hours, then may be closed with sutures.

This isn’t terribly different from a dog bite (except humans are grosser). The wounds will be cleaned, and may be cleaned every day for a little while. Antibiotics may be given prophylactically if the wounds had to be closed immediately for some reason. 

But unless the wound gets infected, they may not even need antibiotics! If the wound gets hot, red, swollen, and tender, with a purulent discharge (pus), then yeah, definitely they need antibiotics, but otherwise they’ll just be allowed to heal on their own.

As for after care, as long as their antibiotics finish out, it’s mostly changing bandages (like you said).

Best of luck!!

xoxo, Aunt Scripty

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